Many industries and operations such as drilling and fracturing operations often require the use of large amounts of fluids. For example, fracturing a gas well in a shale formation often requires a large volume of fracturing fluids. Given the great deal of expense in the fracturing process, industry practice is to accumulate a large volume of fracturing fluids at the well site prior to commencing the fracturing process, thereby allowing for a continuous procedure. To accumulate the requisite volume of fracturing fluids, portable fluid storage tanks are used. The use of these tanks, sometimes referred to as frac tanks or mobile oil field tanks, is well known in the art.
In order to pool the requisite volume of fluids, it is typical for multiple portable storage tanks to be positioned side-by-side and are sometimes joined together with conduit or other tubing, thus creating a reservoir of the required fluid for storage and dispensing purposes. Various liquids are known to the art to be pooled in this manner, including, but not limited to water, a proppant, fracturing liquids, drilling mud, crude oil, as well as various other liquids or slurries.
The applicable industries are constantly striving to enhance the safety of their workers in the field. During normal drilling operations, it is typical for operators to have to ascend to the top of the portable storage tanks for various reasons and to move from one tank to the next. Because the storage tanks are kept on the operation site, they are often exposed to the elements such as rain, ice, and snow, as well as to the fluids stored in the tanks themselves. This exposure has the propensity to make the tanks slick or slippery, thus adding additional risk of injury to the workers who may slip and fall from the large tanks while walking on top of a tank or moving from one tank to the next.
There exists in the prior art attempts to render it easier for workers to move from one tank to the next via external platforms which merely cover the tubing normally positioned on one side of the portable storage tank. However, the prior art utilizes external additions to the portable storage tanks such as stair platforms to alleviate the safety risks posed by the operator need transcending the tubing to move from one tank to the next. The prior art does not address the dangers posed to the operator as he transcends the top of the tank itself.
Thus, there exists significant room for improvement in the art for overcoming these and other shortcomings of conventional portable storage tanks.